1965 Academy Awards® Winners and History A Thousand Clowns (1965) Actor: LEE MARVIN in "Cat Ballou", Richard Burton in "The Spy Who Came In From the Cold", Laurence Olivier in "Othello", Rod Steiger in "The Pawnbroker", Oskar Werner in "Ship of Fools" Actress: JULIE CHRISTIE in "Darling", Julie Andrews in "The Sound of Music" , Samantha Eggar in "The Collector", Elizabeth Hartman in "A Patch of Blue", Simone Signoret in "Ship of Fools" Supporting Actor: MARTIN BALSAM in "A Thousand Clowns", Ian Bannen in "The Flight of the Phoenix", Tom Courtenay in "Doctor Zhivago", Michael Dunn in "Ship of Fools", Frank Finlay in "Othello" Supporting Actress: SHELLEY WINTERS in "A Patch of Blue", Ruth Gordon in "Inside Daisy Clover", Joyce Redman in "Othello", Maggie Smith in "Othello", Peggy Wood in "The Sound of Music" Director: ROBERT WISE for "The Sound of Music" , David Lean for "Doctor Zhivago", John Schlesinger

 for "Darling", Hiroshi Teshigahara for "Woman in the Dunes", William Wyler for "The Collector" This would be the first year that the awards ceremony (on April 18, 1966) would be broadcast in color on television.

The two top films in the Best Picture Oscars race in 1965, The Sound of Music and Doctor Zhivago, each had the same number of nominations (ten), and equally divided the same number of Oscars (five): The top winner was 20th Century Fox's and Robert Wise's The Sound of Music , Rodgers and Hammerstein's Broadway musical of the same name brought to the screen. It was the real-life story of unsuited postulant Maria (Julie Andrews) who left Austria's Nonnberg Abbey, became governess to seven motherless Von Trapp children, and helped lead the singing family out of Nazi-occupied Austria to Switzerland (and then to America). The Sound of Music won Best Picture, Best Director (Robert Wise), Best Musical Score, Best Editing, and Best Sound. [This win gave the musical genre consecutive Best Picture wins - My Fair Lady (1964) had won the previous year.] The Sound of Music also topped Gone With The Wind (1939) as the most commercially-successful, money-grossing film to date - thereby saving its studio 20th Century Fox from bankruptcy.

Best Director and Best Picture winner Robert Wise had won the same two awards four years earlier (for West Side Story (1961) ), but now he didn't have to share his Best Director award with Jerome Robbins. The swoon-inducing romantic epic and spectacle, Doctor Zhivago, was British director David Lean's follow-up to Lawrence of Arabia (1962) - a Russian epic and a colorful film adaptation of Boris Pasternak's novel. Doctor Zhivago won five Oscars: Best Adapted Screenplay (Robert Bolt), Best Color Cinematography (Freddie Young), Best Art Direction, Best Original Musical Score (Maurice Jarre), and Best Costume Design (Phyllis Dalton). The other three Best Picture nominees included: Stanley Kramer's direction of Katherine Anne Porter's adapted novel, Ship of Fools (with eight nominations and two wins - Best B/W Cinematography and Best B/W Art Direction/Set Decoration) - it featured a star-studded cast as a group of passengers sailing to Germany in the 1930s (with Vivien Leigh in her final film role).

the satirical British film about the shallowness of the fashion model scene and the empty life of an amoral model in director John Schlesinger's film, Darling (with five nominations and three wins - Best Actress, Best Story and Screenplay, and Best B/W Costume Design) the low-budget comedy/drama by director Fred Coe (with his debut film), A Thousand Clowns (with four nominations and one win - Best Supporting Actor), written by Herb Gardner and based upon his Broadway play about a non-conformist, drop-out Manhattan writer Only three of the directors of the Best Picture nominees were Best Director nominees. Two additional nominees were Japanese director Hiroshi Teshigahara (with his second feature film) for his allegorical drama about a scientist studying insects in Japanese sand dunes, Woman in the Dunes, and William Wyler (with the last of his record twelve nominations as director) for the un-nerving drama The Collector (with three nominations and no wins) - an adaptation of John Fowles' novel about a psychotic butterfly collector who kidnaps a girl for his collection.

[Teshigahara was the first Japanese director to receive a Best Director nomination and the first non-white director ever nominated.] [William Wyler's previous directorial nominations and three awards in a distinguished career included: Dodsworth (1936) (nom), Ben-Hur (1959) (win).] Neither of the two major films of the year, The Sound of Music or Doctor Zhivago, received any Best Actor nominations. Even more astonishing is the fact that the other prominent nominees in the Best Actor category were defeated by Lee Marvin (with his sole career nomination - and Oscar win) who won the award for his eccentric dual role as cold-eyed, ruthlessly evil desperado Tim Strawn (with an artificial silver nose) and Strawn's aging, once-famous, drunken and whiskey-soaked twin gunman Kid Shelleen in the amusing, small-budget western spoof 'sleeper' film directed by Elliot Silverstein, Cat Ballou (with five nominations and one win - Best Actor). It was one of the rare and unusual times that the Academy rewarded and recognized a comedy performance in a sleeper film.

[Previous Best Actor winners for a comic performance include: Clark Gable for The Philadelphia Story (1940) .] The other nominees in the Best Actor category included: Richard Burton (with his fourth of seven unsuccessful nominations) as Alec Leamas - an unglamorous, disillusioned British spy in director Martin Ritt's film adaptation of John Le Carre's novel, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (with two nominations and no wins) Laurence Olivier (with his seventh nomination) in blackface! in the title role of the Moor in director Oliver Parker's film of Shakespeare's Othello (with four nominations and no wins) Oskar Werner (with his sole nomination in his first English-language film role) as Dr. Schumann - the on-board, dying doctor and lover of Oscar-nominated Simone Signoret in Ship of Fools the heavily-favored Rod Steiger (with his second of three career nominations) as Sol Nazerman, a psychologically-scarred Nazi concentration camp survivor in a Harlem pawn shop in Sidney Lumet's The Pawnbroker (the film's sole nomination).

Two years later, Steiger finally won an Oscar for his role as a Southern sheriff in In the Heat of the Night (1967) . [Oskar Werner was defeated by Ship of Fools co-star Marvin - Werner also co-starred with Burton in The Spy Who Came In From the Cold as an E. German agent.] In the Best Actress category, only one of the nominees was American - Elizabeth Hartman. Three of the nominees were British (Christie, Andrews, and Eggar), and one was French (Signoret). The winner in the Best Actress category was twenty-four year-old Julie Christie (with her first of three career nominations - and her sole Oscar win) for her role as Diana Scott - an ambitious, vain, irresponsible, ruthless, promiscuous, and selfish hip, mini-skirted London model who tempts a serious journalist (Dirk Bogarde) to leave his wife and family, then tires and becomes a decadent, international celebrity/swinger, and finally ends up living a meaningless life as a disillusioned, bored wife of an Italian prince in Darling. It was notable as the first Oscar-winning performance for a nude scene.

(Note: Christie also appeared in one of the year's biggest pictures - Doctor Zhivago, but was un-nominated for that role. Christie would be nominated three more times in her career for her role as Mrs. Miller, madam of a brothel in Robert Altman's McCabe & Mrs.

Miller (1971), as Phyllis Mann in Afterglow (1997), and as afflicted Alzheimer's patient Fiona Andersson in Away From Her (2007).) The other Best Actress nominees included: Simone Signoret (with her second and last career nomination) as La Condesa - Oskar Werner's drug-addicted countess/mistress in Ship of Fools Samantha Eggar (with her sole nomination) as Miranda Gray - the stalked art student/victim of butterfly collector Terence Stamp in William Wyler's The Collector Elizabeth Hartman (with her sole nomination in her film debut) as Selina D'Arcey - a blind white girl involved in a racial romance (with Sidney Poitier) in director Guy Green's A Patch of Blue (with five nominations and one win - Best Supporting Actress) the other 'Julie': Julie Andrews (with her second of three career nominations) as the postulant nun Maria turned cheerful governess to seven Von Trapp children in Austria in The Sound of Music .

[In the previous year, Andrews had received a Best Actress win for Mary Poppins (1964).] Among the Best Supporting nominees, there were three from Othello - it was the 3rd film in Academy history to receive four acting nominations without a Best Picture nomination (this also occurred in 1936, 1948, and 2008): Frank Finlay (with his sole nomination) as the villainous, scheming Iago Joyce Redman (with her second of two unsuccessful career nominations) as Iago's wife Emilia Maggie Smith (with her first nomination) as the tragic Desdemona, Othello's innocent wife The Best Supporting Actor winner was Martin Balsam (with his sole Oscar nomination - and win) as Arnold Burns, the agent brother of the oddball non-conformist and unemployed kiddie-show writer Jason Robards, Jr. - they both try to avoid social workers who threaten the guardianship of their 12 year old nephew in the comedy-drama A Thousand Clowns.

The other supporting actor nominees were: Tom Courtenay (with his first of two unsuccessful career nominations) for his role as Russian revolutionary Pasha/Strelnikoff in Doctor Zhivago Michael Dunn (with his sole nomination) for his role as compassionate, philosophizing dwarf Glocken in Ship of Fools Ian Bannen (with his sole nomination) for his role as Crow in Robert Aldrich's survival-adventure film The Flight of the Phoenix (with two nominations and no wins), about a downed plane in the Sahara desert The Best Supporting Actress winner was Shelley Winters (with her third of four career nominations) as Rose-Ann D'arcy - the over-bearing, slatternly, amoral, shrewish mother of blind girl Elizabeth Hartman (who befriends and falls in love with a young black man - unaware of his skin color) in A Patch of Blue. [This was Winters' second Best Supporting Actress award, six years after her first win in the same category for The Diary of Anne Frank (1959). She became the first actress to win two Oscars in the category.

She was the only actress to be twice honored in the "supporting" category, a record that she held until 1994 when Dianne Wiest won her second "supporting" award.] The remaining Best Supporting Actress nominees were: Peggy Wood (with her sole nomination) as the Mother Abbess in The Sound of Music Ruth Gordon (with her first of two career nominations) as 'the Dealer' (co-star Natalie Wood's mother) in director Robert Mulligan's story of a rising teen star titled Inside Daisy Clover (with three nominations and no wins) Oscar Snubs and Omissions: One of the best films of the year was entirely overlooked: Polish director Roman Polanski's first film in English - the British-made, suspenseful character study Repulsion, with Catherine Deneuve as an unstable young French manicurist repulsed by sex. Ivan Dixon was bypassed for his role as Alabama black laborer Duff Anderson in Nothing But A Man. Tony Richardson's farce about the funeral parlor business The Loved One, which included another acting performance by Rod Steiger as Mr. Joyboy, was nomination-less.

Sean Connery, better known for the increasingly-popular James Bond films, was un-nominated for his role as Trooper Roberts, a prisoner in a British desert prison camp, in Sidney Lumet's The Hill. [Connery finally won an Oscar as Best Supporting Actor for his work in The Untouchables (1987) - his sole nomination, despite great performances in The Man Who Would Be King (1975), Robin and Marian (1976) and The Hunt for Red October (1990) .] Inexplicably, writer/producer/director George Stevens' four hour New Testament epic disaster The Greatest Story Ever Told, received five nominations: Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Score, and Best Visual Effects - nominations taken from other deserving films. Although Julie Christie was nominated - and won - for her role in Darling, she was not nominated for her equally great performance as blonde-haired Lara in David Lean's Russian epic Doctor Zhivago. Rod Steiger, who was nominated as Best Actor for a different film this year, wasn't nominated for one of the best roles of his career in Doctor Zhivago as the nefarious Victor Komarovsky.

And two major stars of the year's two film rivals, Christopher Plummer (as aristocratic widower Captain von Trapp in The Sound of Music ) and Omar Sharif (as Yuri Zhivago in Doctor Zhivago) were not nominated for Best Actor. A more memorable performance than the one of Best Supporting Actor winner Martin Balsam was Gene Saks' un-nominated portrayal of the grotesque, obnoxious kiddie-show star "Chuckles the Chipmunk" in A Thousand Clowns. None of the memorable songs (performed as early music videos) in the Beatles' Help! were nominated, including Help!, Yesterday, It's Only Love, You're Going to Lose that Girl, and Ticket to Ride. Oscar Vault Monday – Ship Of Fools, 1965 (dir. Stanley Kramer) | the diary of a film history fanatic the diary of a film history fanatic Posted by cinemafanatic This was a film I’d meant to watch for a while because it was Vivien Leigh’s last screen appearance. Then it disappeared off of Instant Netflix and I kind of forgot I wanted to watch it.

Luckily for me, TCM showed the film last week as part of its 31 Days of Oscar and boy am I glad that they did. I absolutely loved it. I think it might be one of the finest examples of interlocking storylines I’ve ever seen. Plus, the set decoration and cinematography were to die for. Some of the crispest B&W cinematography I’ve seen in a while. The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards, winning two: Best B&W Art Direction (won), Best Cinematography (won), Best B&W Costume Design, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actress Simone Signoret, Best Supporting Actor Michael Dunn, Best Actor Oskar Werner and Best Picture. The other films up for Best Picture that year were Darling, Doctor Zhivago, A Thousand Clowns and winner The Sound of Music. This film also contains one of the greatest ensemble casts ever assembled. I’m not going to write about every single performance/storyline, partly because that would take forever and partly because I couldn’t find videos of everything in order to make good screencaps. Instead, I’m going to write about my favorite handful of storylines.

Like I said earlier, this was the last screen appearance of two-time Oscar-winner Vivien Leigh. Prior to seeing this film, the latest of her performances I’d seen was The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, which was a hot mess, so it was nice to see her in a later film that was actually thoroughly good. It was also kind of difficult to watch because her character, Mary Treadwell, was a fragile middle-aged woman and that fragility seemed more or less the state in which Vivien herself was in. Knowing her health problems, it was hard for me to tell how much was feigned and how much was just Vivien. Regardless, I think she gives a fine performance in this film and a worthy final performance for such a fabulous career. However, my favorite storyline in the film was that of La Condesa (played with exquisite melancholy by Academy Award-winner Simone Signoret), a doomed aristocrat heading to an island prison, and her new-found friendship with the ship’s doctor (played by Oskar Werner). The two of them have such great chemistry together.

Signoret was nominated for Best Actress for her performance in the film (having previously won the award for 1959’s Room At The Top), ultimately losing to Julie Christie in Darling. I have to say, I’ve seen Darling and I just don’t quite get why she won that award. Really, I’ve seen all five of the performances that were nominated that year and I’d have to say Christie would probably rank last among them for me. I’ve been a fan of Oscar Werner for years now because I love him so much in François Truffaut’s Fahrenheit 451. Werner’s Dr. Willie Schumann is the heart of this film; as the ship’s doctor, he is one of the few characters that interacts with everyone. The intimate scenes between him and Signoret are probably the best scenes in the film. (NB: by intimate, I mean deep and intense conversations, not sex). However, the scene that struck me the most is just after one of the steerage passengers dies saving the beloved dog of a first class couple, who are so obtuse that all they can think about is why the doctor isn’t taking a look at their dog.

I got chills when Werner tells the couple that the man who saved their dog died and abruptly leaves out of disgust. Heinz Rühmann as Julius Lowenthal delivers one of my favorite lines in the film, in response to José Ferrer’s anti-Semitic Siegfried Rieber: Rieber: You must admit that the Jews are a great part of the German problem. Lowenthal: True, but not only the Jews, also men who smoke the pipe are a great part of the German problem. Rieber: Why men who smoke the pipe? Lowenthal: Why the Jews? Speaking of lines that I really liked, my other favorite came during a conversation between Vivien Leigh’s Treadwell and Lee Marvin’s southern alcoholic and one-time baseball player, Bill Tenny. Overhearing some anti-Semitic remarks made by one of the European passengers, Tenny says something like the Southerners have nothing against the Jews and in fact he’d never seen one until he was 15 years old. Treadwell replies, “Perhaps you were too busy lynching Negroes to care about the Jews.” The way she delivers the line is just so perfectly acerbic.

Marvin, while not nominated for his role in this film, won the Best Actor Academy Award that same year for his performance in Cat Ballou. Another great storyline in the film is that of George Segal’s David and his girlfriend (and maybe soon-to-be fiance) Jenny (Elizabeth Ashley). The two are so perfectly matched acting-wise, bringing to life characters that are so perfectly mismatched. David is a painter who is dealing with his own lack of success and Jenny is obsessed with status and wants David to try to figure out another way to be successful. Segal shows passion and maturity, something that he perfected the next year in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, for which he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor. Lastly, I wanted to talk about Michael Dunn, whose steerage passenger Carl Glocken breaks the fourth wall at the beginning and end of the film with his observations. Dunn, a dwarf who refused to be cast in “cute” roles, preferring instead to prove himself as a serious actor in dramatic roles, was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as Glocken. Dunn lost to Martin Balsam in A Thousand Clowns. If you’re interested in purchasing this film, you can do so here .

41.487115 -120.542456 Ship of Fools (1965) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error A varied group of passengers boarding a ship bound for post-war Germany represents a microcosm of 1930s society. Director: From $2.99 (SD) on Amazon Video ON DISC Watch the video Related News User Lists Related lists from IMDb users a list of 40 titles created 16 Feb 2012 a list of 22 titles created 20 Jul 2014 a list of 30 titles created 31 Oct 2015 a list of 26 titles created 11 months ago a list of 25 titles created 4 months ago Title: Ship of Fools (1965) 7.2/10 Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below.

You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Won 2 Oscars. Another 3 wins & 13 nominations. See more awards » Videos An aging actress travels to Rome with her husband; after he suddenly dies during the flight, she begins a passionate affair with a young gigolo. Director: José Quintero During World War I, believing her fiancé to be dead, a young ballerina loses her job and is forced to turn to prostitution. Director: Mervyn LeRoy The story of courtesan and dance-hall girl Emma Hamilton, including her relationships with Sir William Hamilton and Admiral Horatio Nelson and her rise and fall, set during the Napoleonic Wars. Director: Alexander Korda A married woman's affair with a dashing young officer has tragic results. Director: Julien Duvivier A woman unhappy in her passionless marriage leaves her husband for a younger and more ardent lover. Director: Anatole Litvak On the sidewalks of the London theater district the buskers (street performers) earn enough coins for a cheap room. Charles, who recites dramatic monologues, sees that a young pickpocket, ...

See full summary » Director: Tim Whelan A middle-aged iconoclast, doggedly avoiding the tedium of employment and conventional life, faces the prospect of losing custody of his young ward. Director: Fred Coe At the height of the Roman Civil War, a young Cleopatra meets a middle-aged Julius Caesar who teaches her how to rule Egypt. Director: Gabriel Pascal An ambitious young accountant schemes to wed a wealthy factory owner's daughter, despite falling in love with a married older woman. Director: Jack Clayton A local politician in Scotland tries to break the reporter who wrote a negative story about him, and who is also in love with his daughter. Directors: Ian Dalrymple, Victor Saville Stars: Vivien Leigh, Rex Harrison, Cecil Parker A beautiful but amoral model sleeps her way to the top of the London fashion scene at the height of the Swinging Sixties. Director: John Schlesinger An ego-driven, aspiring physician, intolerant of the weaknesses of others, especially those closest to him, comes to grips with his own imperfections.

Director: Stanley Kramer Edit Storyline 1933: An ocean liner belonging to a second-rate German company is making a twenty-six day voyage from Veracruz, Mexico to Bremerhaven, Germany. Along the way it will stop in Cuba to pick up a large group of Spanish farm laborers who are being shipped home and who will be housed like cattle in steerage. There it will also pick up La Condesa, a Spanish countess. It will stop in Tenerife, where the farm workers will disembark and where La Condesa will be sent to a German-run prison for her "traitorous" activities in Cuba. This voyage will be the last of three for the ship's doctor, Willi Schumann, who has a serious heart ailment and who thought he could find some meaning to his life through this job. Willi and La Condesa fall in love, with the ship's Captain Thiele, who is Willi's closest friend on board, believing the drug-addicted La Condesa is only using him to get her fixes. Willi and La Condesa have to figure out if there is a future for them after the voyage, as Willi's life also ...

Written by Huggo Everywhere...Everyone's Calling It the Must-See Picture of the Year! See more » Genres: October 1965 (Austria) See more » Also Known As: Did You Know? Trivia Although set in 1933, the hairstyles and costumes are decidedly mid-sixties. See more » Quotes Elsa : Sixteen. Lowenthal : Adolescence. What is adolescence? Adolescence is a time when people worry about things there's no need to worry about. Sixteen... I promise you, at seventeen you will be even more charming than you are now. At twenty-one, you will be gorgeous. And at twenty-five... devastating! And I won't stand any argument! An all-star cast en route to Germany as Hitler takes power 17 August 2006 | by blanche-2 (United States) – See all my reviews "Ship of Fools" it may be, but it is also a Ship of Stars: Oskar Werner, Vivien Leigh, Lee Marvin, Simone Signoret, Jose Ferrer, Elizabeth Ashley, George Segal, and Michael Dunn.

Directed by Stanley Kramer, this 1965 film deals with a German ship heading to its port in Bremerhaven in 1933 and the lives of some of its passengers. Dunn speaks to the audience at the beginning and end of the film, telling us at first that it is a ship of fools and that we may find ourselves in some of the characters. This is one of the best all-star casts ever assembled, right up there with "All About Eve" and "The Long, Hot Summer." The performances are as magnificent as the film is relentlessly depressing, with a Jewish man put at a table with a dwarf, while at the captain's table, another man preaches about the new Germany and extermination of Jews, the elderly, and those who are not fit. The optimistic Jew thinks Germany owes the Jews a great deal and vice versa, and with 1 million Jews there, certainly no one is going to kill all of them. A drug-addicted woman is being deported to an island, and the very ill ship's doctor falls in love with her and is tempted to give up his miserable life to care for her. A couple with a passionate sex life finds they are poles apart in every other way.

A bitter, middle-aged woman comes to grips with her loneliness and tries to drink it away. And on and on, on the ship of fools. By the end of the film, looking at the Jew's beautiful family on the dock, the viewer is ready to reach for a razor blade. Oskar Werner (Tyrone Power's son-in-law) gives a magnificent performance as a man discouraged about his life full of obligations, exhausted from ill health, and reaching out for one last chance at happiness. Simone Signoret, who falls for the doctor, is a warm and sympathetic countess, nervous about her future, her past dried up. Lee Marvin, as a southern drunk who wants to get laid, is perfection - Vivien Leigh herself was impressed with him. "What's this about the Jews?" he asks her. "I never saw a Jew until I was 15." "Perhaps you were too busy lynching Negroes to care about the Jews," she replies. For Vivien Leigh, Scarlett is far behind her - 26 years behind her, in fact, with almost no vestige of her left due to Leigh's battles with manic-depression and the dissolution of her marriage to Laurence Olivier.

As Scarlett herself would have said, "That girl doesn't exist anymore." Her character is the Blanche Dubois who didn't go to the asylum and some years later takes a cruise. Even the last gown she wears, as she dances the Charleston, is reminiscent of Blanche. It's a great performance as a beautiful woman who has seen better days and is disillusioned and bitter about men, love, and romance. Her big scenes at the end of the film - in the hallway and with Marvin - are fantastic. I have to believe, though "Ship of Fools" is downbeat, that it leaves us with some hope. Dunn, as the dwarf philosopher, is too smart to stick around Germany once things heat up; perhaps his Jewish friend will see the light before it's too late. The Countess is a survivor; no reason she shouldn't survive the island. But for all of them, a certain way of life has ended, and they won't be going back. One of the great films of the '60s. 48 of 61 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you?

Yes From the Archives: Vivien Leigh, 'Gone With the Wind' Star, Dies at 53 - LA Times From the Archives: Vivien Leigh, 'Gone With the Wind' Star, Dies at 53 leigh Clarence Sinclair Bull / Getty Images Vivien Leigh was an Academy Award winner for her role as Scarlett O'Hara in "Gone With the Wind." Vivien Leigh was an Academy Award winner for her role as Scarlett O'Hara in "Gone With the Wind." (Clarence Sinclair Bull / Getty Images) Harry TrimbornTimes Staff Writer Vivien Leigh, the tiny, frail actress from the Himalaya Mountains who won enduring fame for her fiery film performance as Scarlett O'Hara in "Gone With the Wind," died Saturday in London. The 53-year-old two-time Academy Award winner was found dead in bed in her apartment in the fashionable Belgravia district. Dispatches from London gave no official cause of death. However, Miss Leigh was stricken a month ago with a recurrence of tuberculosis, an illness that had plagued her for nearly a quarter of a century. She had appeared to be recovering from the latest attack.

Second Oscar in 'Streetcar' Miss Leigh won the first Oscar in 1940 for her portrayal of Scarlett. She won the second Oscar 12 years later for her performance in "A Streetcar Named Desire." Her last American film was "Ship of Fools," released in 1965. George Cukor, who directed Miss Leigh in the first part of the famed Civil War epic, said he had received a telegram from her Friday congratulating him on his birthday. "It was a most charming telegram," he said. "This is very sad news, very tragic, very upsetting." Actress Olivia de Havilland, the only survivor of the four principal stars of "Gone With the Wind," burst into tears when informed of Miss Leigh's death. "Oh, my God. How did she die?" said Miss de Havilland. "I don't think I can say anything." Miss Leigh's death brought similar exclamations of shock and sorrow from around the world from persons who had known or worked with the 5-foot-3, 100-pound actress, honored as one of Britain's greatest contemporary women performers.

leigh (Los Angeles Times) Marquee Light Extinguished All theaters in London's West End extinguished their marquee lights for an hour Saturday night in honor of her memory. Sir Laurence Olivier, Miss Leigh's husband for 20 years until their divorce in 1960 and a key link in the chain of events that gave the actress the role of Scarlett, went to Miss Leigh's apartment when he learned of her death. He left 30 minutes later without comment. Miss Leigh's recent tuberculosis attack came as the red-haired actress was to start rehearsals for the London stage production of Edward Albee's play, "A Delicate Balance." It also came as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was preparing for the sixth national release (on Oct. 11) of "Gone With the Wind," the most popular — and biggest money-maker film — of all time. In its five previous releases since 1939, the film earned more than $35 million. Miss Leigh received a flat fee of $20,000 for the role of Scarlett. "I wouldn't have objected to just a little bit of the percentage (of the film's income)," she later remarked ruefully.

Her selection for the Scarlett role has become embedded in the folklore of Hollywood. When producer David O. Selznick decided to film the Civil War novel by the late Margaret Mitchell, a worldwide search was launched for a woman to play the role of the tempestuous Southern belle. Sought Fiery Star "The girl I select," said Cukor, who was later replaced as director by Victor Fleming, "must be possessed of the devil and charged with electricity." She needed also to be the physical counterpart of the diminutive, slender heroine in the film version of Miss Mitchell's novel starring Clark Gable as Rhett Butler. The quest triggered feminine dreams of glamor, wealth and fame around the world. And at least 1,400 women who felt they matched the requirements, physical and psychological, submitted applications to the studio. Even such famous and established stars as Carole Lombard and Paulette Goddard were in the running.

But the part went to a relatively unknown English actress of 26 who flew to Hollywood to visit her sweetheart, Sir Laurence, then starring in the film, "Wuthering Heights." Olivier introduced her to agent Myron Selznick, who in turn introduced her to Myron's brother, the producer, with the comment: "Meet Scarlett O'Hara." Olivier later took Miss Leigh to the Selznick lot, where about 100 Hollywood notables had gathered to watch the filming of the flaming destruction of Atlanta by Union troops. Production of the epic had gotten under way despite the absence of a star for the top feminine role, a factor that heightened excitement among the hopefuls. Miss Leigh later recalled the moment of her selection in a magazine article: "Mr. Selznick, watching me in the flickering light, decided I was Scarlett's physical type." Her selection brought groans of disappointment from the other contenders, and the threat of a boycott of the film from the Ocala, Fla., Daughters of the Confederacy. They protested that only a native Southerner should have the role. Miss Leigh found Scarlett an unsympathetic character.

"A silly girl, in the sense that all self-centered people are silly and blind," she said in appraisal in the closing days of filming. But Scarlett earned Miss Leigh an Oscar. Miss Leigh, a versatile actress equally at ease with light frothy roles, played other unsympathetic Southern women in her later important American films. She portrayed the faded, neurotic Blanche du Bois in "A Streetcar Named Desire" and an alcoholic in "Ship of Fools." Despite her long battle against tuberculosis, Miss Leigh frequently displayed off-screen high spirits that would have won Scarlett's approval. Ousted by Lords In 1953, she draped a cobra (its poisonous fangs removed) around her neck in a visit to India. Several years later she was ejected from Britain's House of Lords after interrupting a debate to protest the planned demolition of the St. James Theater. Miss Leigh was born November 5, 1913, in Darjeeling, a city in India at the foot of Mt. Everest. Her father, Ernest E. Hartley, was a Calcutta stockbroker of French descent. Her mother was Irish.

She was educated in a Bavarian convent and at finishing schools in England and continental Europe. At 19 she married London barrister Herbert Leigh Holman. The couple had one child, Suzanne. They were divorced in 1940. Studying or working at her profession since she was 14, Miss Leigh made her London stage debut in 1935. She met Olivier, who is now married to actress Joan Plowright, when they performed in Shakespeare's "Hamlet" in 1935. They later appeared together in numerous plays. She appeared in more than 10 films. Born Vivian Mary Hartley (she changed the A to E in the first name "because it sounded more feminine"), she used her first husband's middle name for her career. But it will be as Scarlett O'Hara that she will be remembered. Ship of Fools (1965) | Emanuel Levy Ship of Fools (1965) July 30, 2007 by EmanuelLevy Leave a Comment Representing prestigious and literary cinema at its most ponderous, “Ship of Fools” was nominated for eight Oscars, including Best Picture.

Stanley Kramer directed the Nazi trial drama “Judgment at Nuremberg” before “Ship of Fools,” and undoubtedly it was good preparation, because “Ship of Fools,” which is based on Katherine Ann Porter's book (published in 1962), is a monument to tragedy and catastrophe. The tale could be described as “Grand Hotel” or “Stagecoach” on water, since it's based on the same thematic premise: an aggregate of disparate passengers stuck and confined in space in a time of crisis. In the early 1930s, as an ocean liner leaves Vera Cruz, heading for Hitler's Germany, Bremerhaven, to be exact. The host, sort of a Greek tragedy, or a narrator like the one in “Our Town,” is a cynical dwarf named Glocken (Michael Dunn). At the beginning, addressing the audience, he warns us that we might even find ourselves aboard the ship.

And at the end, with an ironic smile on his face, Glocken notes: “What has all this to do with us today Why, nothing at all” Throughout, serving as the moral compass, Glocken ridicules the lurid, morally blank lives of his fellow passengers–in other words, “little” people like us. They include a cross-section of upper-class and working-class people, with a couple of misfits thrown into the mix. The wealthy Germans on the ship are asked to sit at the captain's tableexcept for the aforementioned dwarf and a Jew, Heinz Ruhmann. The ship's gentle doctor, Schumann (Oskar Werner), himself a victim of heart condition, courts La Condesa (Simone Signoret), a Spaniard deported for her political activities. Lee Marvin plays Tenny, a failed baseball player whose career ended when he couldn't hit the outside curve ball. Almost always drunk, he makes a pass as Mary Treadwell (Vivien Leigh), a flirtatious divorcee, anxious to dance. The younger generation is represented by David and Jenny (George Segal and Elizabeth Ashley), a bickering couple about to get married.

While David is a proletarian artist with animalistic behavior, Jenny is a rich, neurotic matron jealous of his talent The group also includes the evangelist Wengraf, and the dancer Pepe (Jose Greco). Crudely edited, we switch from one banal subplot to another–and left at the mercy of the good actors to elevate the scripted text above its pretentious melodramatics. We are led to believe that the frivolous women (Vivien Leigh, Elizabeth Ashley, Simone Signoret) would do just about anything for an exquisite outfit, a decent dancing partner, or, in Signoret's case, a quick drug fix. Their male companions–selfish artist George Segal, rich oaf Lee Marvin, weakling Oskar Werner, and Nazi-worshipper Jose Ferrer as Trieber–are worse than the women. Impressively shot by Ernst Laszlo in black and white, the film looks suitably bleak, but is poorly directed by Stanley Kramer who can't unify the episodic material, resulting in a long (two and half hours), uneven film with as many dramatic highs as low ones. Symbolism of the picture is also heavy-handed by Mann the writer and director.

While Porter's novel was set in 1931, the filmmakers moved the saga ahead to 1933, the year that Hitler rose to power. The film features Vivien Leigh's final performance, Oscar-nominated turns from Signoret, Werner, and Dunn, and a robust performance from Lee Marvin, who won the Oscar that very year for the spoof Western, “Cat Ballou.” Oscar Nominations: 8 View All Photos (10) Movie Info The first person the audience sees in Ship of Fools is dwarf Michael Dunn, who speaks to viewers directly and acts as a Greek chorus throughout the film. It begins on the deck of an ocean liner travelling from Vera Cruz to Bremerhaven. The time is the 1930s, so close and yet so far from war. The cross-section of humanity on board includes ship's doctor Oscar Werner, Spanish political activist Simone Signoret, aging coquette Vivien Leigh, hedonistic baseball player Lee Marvin, philosophical Jew Heinz Ruhmann, a smattering of pro- and anti-Hitlerites (Jose Ferrer plays the nastiest and most vocal "pro") and young lovers George Segal and Elizabeth Ashley.

Yes, it's Grand Hotel at sea, a feast for stargazers and an endurance test for those who aren't comfortable with non-stop speechmaking. Despite such lines as "What can the Nazis do? Kill all six million of us?," Ship of Fools manages to stay afloat throughout its 148 minutes. Michael Dunn was nominated for an Academy Award for his interlocutory characterization; the rest of the performances range from brilliant to merely filling up the room. Other Oscars were presented to cinematographer Ernest Lazslo and to the art-direction staff. Ship of Fools was adapted by Abby Mann from the novel by Katharine Ann Porter. Rating:

Question: Which 'Oscar' winning actress's last film was 'Ship Of Fools' in 1965?
Answer: VIVIEN LEIGH